


A Mother's Worst Nightmare

by FiveAM



Category: The Incredibles (2004)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 02:58:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15354726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiveAM/pseuds/FiveAM
Summary: A mother and son story, as Dash gets hurt during a mission and Helen has trouble coming to terms with what happened.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone. This is my first fanfic that I decided to publish (and only my second fully-completed one), as well as my first regarding the Incredibles. I've noticed a lack of fics regarding the relationships between the parents and their kids, so here is something to fill that niche.
> 
> Fair warning, I did take a few liberties in writing this work, so if anything seems out of place (specifically the car the bad guys use), that is why.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

Another day, another crime that needed to be addressed. With Supers legal again, the Parrs, or Incredibles, have been taking up a lot more fighting during their downtime. Not every night was taken up, though. Bob and Helen knew when their kids needed to get homework done and were always willing to stay behind to help out, leaving the other to take down the bad guys (usually bank robbers).

Low and behold, on tonight’s menu was robbers. The family was able to go out together this time as both Dash and Violet were given an incredibly thin stack of homework tonight, both of whom got their respective work done in less than a half-hour.

The robbers in this case seemed to have a good driver, as he had an older BMW M5 and was able to cut through traffic without a hitch. He also had acceleration and speed down pat, never even once slowing down due to fear of hitting something.

Once suited up, the family hopped into the incredibile and swiftly gave chase. They caught up to the robbers easily, but they were caught off guard by just how good the driver was. He was even able to trick the Incredibile’s computer, maneuvering the car into places that set off the sensors of the Incrediblile, causing it to slow down or stop so it wouldn't hit anything.

Believing they needed a human element to help, Bob ordered Dash to get out and run alongside the M5 to both keep up with it and figure out just what kind of robbers they were dealing with. Dash swiftly accepted the task, jumped out of the window, and booked it towards the robbers. Having the reflexes that come with superspeed, he was able to keep up with the robbers easily, be it by jumping over cars, jumping onto cars, wallrunning, and fitting through tight spaces.

He was able to see inside the car in between keeping up with it. He saw three guys, five guns, a bunch of ammo, and one big bag filled with money. One of the robbers saw Dash following them, immediately grabbed what looked like a modded AK-47 and promptly unleashed a barrage of bullets onto him. 

Dash had to be careful, now. Not only did he have to deal with keeping up with the car, he also wanted to make sure no civilians got hit by the bullets, on top of avoiding them himself. To this end, he spent the next few moments switching between wallrunning (hoping to God that he was at an angle where the bullets would do nothing more than break a few windows), and running and bouncing off of the cars that were in the way, bouncing around in a more sporadic manner so that the gunman didn’t have a good aim on him. 

For the first couple of clips, he was actually doing fairly well. He kept out of the way of all civilians that had a chance of being hit, had only a few windows get hit while running along the buildings, and was all the while keenly aware of where the gunman was and how to dodge the oncoming set of rounds. While Bob kept focus on keeping up with the robbers, and Violet worked at getting a field around the car in case the gunman turned his attention to the family, Helen could only watch her son in both fear and in awe. Watching someone shoot at her son will never get easy, but the way he was dodging the bullets and maneuvering around the city was captivating. It reminded her of her own cases of keeping up with robbers such as these before she married Bob.

Dash could only keep this up for so long, though. By the time the gunman was on the fourth clip, he started to figure out Dash’s pattern. He found a perfect chance to shoot Dash when he was mid-jump between a couple cars. The robbers were approaching a T-intersection right in front of town hall, and the gunman told the driver to turn left when he got to there. The driver, in the farthest right lane, cut the red light and slammed the wheel to the left. Dash knew he was in a bad spot when he saw what was happening and was only able contort his body in a way so that he hoped the shots wouldn’t be lethal.

The gunman fired three shots. Two barely grazed Dash while a third hit him right above the knee. The pain took its toll and threw Dash off at making a safe landing. A moment later, he crashed. Hard. He landed hard on the sidewalk in front of town hall and tumbled briefly onto the lawn before crashing into a bench, knocking him out.

The family saw everything and Helen let out the loudest yell she had ever produced. “DASH!!!!”


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many medical liberties were taken with this chapter. I hope everyone enjoys, regardless.

Bob stopped the car immediately and everyone ran to Dash. Helen took him into her arms and cradled him, hopeful to feel some breath come out of him. Bob, Violet, and Jack-Jack were crushed at the sight of seeing Dash in this state. She felt a wave of relief when she could feel his weak breath. 

“We need to get him to a hospital!” Bob screamed.

“No, just me” said Helen, in a calm, but aggressive voice. “I want you two to go and get those robbers. I want them to pay for what they did to my baby” she said, gritting her teeth while saying the last sentence.

After hesitating, Bob agreed, seeing a fire in his wife’s eye and his own son lying lifeless in her arms. “OK, and I’ll make sure they do” he said aggressively. Violet didn’t say anything but found a lot of determination in that sentence as well. With Jack-Jack in violet’s arms, the three of them immediately got into the Incredibile and sped off, with Violet thinking to herself “You’ll be okay Dash. I know you will.”

Helen immediately went from angry to concerned as soon as they left. She had to get Dash to a doctor, and fast. Luckily, she knew exactly the place where she would take him; the city headquarters for the government-sanctioned superhero department also had a functioning hospital underground, specifically to treat supers so that they could remain anonymous in the event of injury.

She had to hurry. She didn’t know where the bullet specifically went through Dash and whether it severed an artery. She acted similar to how dash was moving when he was tailing the robbers, as she was swinging through the city in order to make it there as soon as possible. During this, Dash lapsed in and out of consciousness several times, mumbling things completely inaudible. Too concerned with getting him to safety to listen, all Helen said to herself was “It’s going to be okay, Dash. I’m getting you help, and you’ll be alright.”

She quickly made it to the building and handed her son over to the emergency staff. She was told that she would have to wait in the waiting area, as the doctors were the professionals and would take good care of him. She knew surgery would have to be done on him, so she ran to the observation room to make sure all was well with him, but not before yelling towards the doctors “Make sure he lives.”

The doctors examined and X-ray’d him quickly. The bullet lodged itself above the knee, but missed a serious artery, so blood loss would not be an issue. The real damage came from the impacts afterwards, as he had a fractured spine from the impact with the bench, and that impact, coupled with the initial one to the sidewalk, left him with a concussion. The technology that these doctors possessed was vastly superior to anything a normal hospital had, and so they could easily treat the concussion that night, as well as fix up his leg and spine without many repercussions. So efficient was this tech that he probably wouldn't even need a brace or a cast.

Despite this, Helen still stood nervously in the viewing room as the surgeons extracted the bullet from her son. She started to feel guilty over this. She was his mother and she couldn’t do anything to protect him. Thoughts immediately swarmed her head, nagging her with statements such as “If you were out there with him, then he wouldn’t have gotten hurt” and “You call yourself a mother and yet you can’t even protect your own kid? You’re a complete disgrace of a mother and a hero!” She broke down at all of this, wishing she could have done something, anything, to keep Dash from being in a place like this.

Bob, Violet, and Jack-Jack quickly came into the room. Helen tried to pull herself together when she saw them, quickly embracing Bob and Violet before taking Jack-Jack from Violet’s arms.

“So, what happened with the robbers?” Helen asked in a stern voice.

Bob explained that when they drove away, they caught up to the robbers. Violet had Jack-Jack use his laser eyes to shoot out one of the rear-tires on the car. The driver wasn’t able to recover the back-end of the car before it nicked a parked car on the side of the road, causing them to spin and flip over.

The robbers tried to escape, but Jack-Jack turned into a demon baby the moment he saw them, giving chase and eventually beating up both the driver and the other robber under the watch of Violet. Bob went for the gunman, caught him, and gave him a massive punch, knocking him unconscious. The police quickly came, apprehended the three crooks, and recovered the stolen money, and using the tracking beacon built into Helen’s suit, the family came straight away.

They all watched as the surgeons finished up working on Dash. The doctor came in and told them he expected a full recovery from Dash. The bullet did no serious damage, his spine would heal up perfectly, and that the concussion would heal itself after some sleep. It wouldn’t affect him, though, if he decided to go to school tomorrow. Everyone felt relief at the news. He would be able to go home that night, with no cast or brace.

A short while later, they were allowed to see Dash in the recovery room. It was a lot darker than regular hospital rooms, since there was no natural lighting, but it made up for it in that the only thing that was needed inside the room was a monitoring machine. Rather than using saline, the machine created a sort of medical field around Dash that stabilized him and administered mists of medicine as needed. It was also covered in neon lighting, allowing whoever used it something to look at, too, if they didn’t feel like watching TV.

Dash was fully awake when they came in. He was watching cartoons, cross-legged, but promptly shifted his attention to his family.

“Hey, how’s my boy?” said Bob, rushing in to embrace his son

“I’m fine, dad. I’m fine.” Dash said, laughing.

“You’re a lot tougher than you let on” Violet said, half-smirking.

Even Jack-Jack floated over to see his older brother, overjoyed to see him again.

“Good news: you get to come home tonight. Come on, let’s get going” Bob said, putting Dash on his shoulders as Violet took Jack-Jack and turned off the TV in the room. Helen was lagging behind slightly, guilt still eating at her over the event. 

Once in the car and on the road, Bob looked at Dash in the rear-view mirror and said “I never got to say before, but you did a great job keeping up with the robbers. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, dad. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to keep going.”

“No need to apologize. Your health is much more important than catching those robbers.”

Dash got tense at hearing that and screamed “You let them go?”

“No, we got ‘em”

“Oh thank Goodness” said Dash, slumping into his seat in a sigh. “I didn’t go down just so they could escape.”

Helen felt uneasy listening to them. She felt that Dash was in a little bit of too high spirits considering what happened to him. Concerned for him, she asked “How do you feel?”

“Honestly not that bad. My leg feels completely fine.”

“You may want to give your powers a rest for the day, tomorrow” Bob intervened. “The doctor told us a full day of not using them would bring the best results.”

“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”

“Depends on how you feel tomorrow. Chances are good, though, that you’ll be fine.”

Dash slouched back at this news. He wanted to use his ordeal as an excuse, but he felt that it would be in poor taste, at least according to everyone else, so he backed off. Besides, it was probably reported already that a young Super was injured during the chase, and he didn't want to risk his classmates putting two and two together if he didn't show up tomorrow. Nothing that Dicker couldn't fix, but who knows just how many people would figure it out. He decided not to leave much to chance.

Helen stayed silent for the rest of the ride home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The underground hospital was a concept that I couldn't let slide. I imagine that if Supers got injured on duty, they wouldn't just go to the nearest hospital, since 1. there secret identities would probably be vulnerable, and 2. I can't imagine treating a Super is the same as treating a regular human. There had to be someplace they could go to heal up unrealistically fast with state-of-the-art tech in secrecy. So that's where the hospital bits came from, and I quite liked the idea. 
> 
> Also, the first film kind of gave the impression that Dash and Violet had suits that sacrificed sheer strength for working with their respective powers, specifically the scene where the henchman tries to shoot both of them in the when they reunite in the jungle, as well as the fact that Edna never actually said that they were when Helen's and Jack-Jack's were, so I used that as the reason why the bullet was able to hurt Dash. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope everyone enjoyed. Constructive criticism is always appreciated, as are Kudos if you enjoyed.


	3. The Final Part

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for the final act, and easily the most personal of the three. I hope everyone enjoys.

Getting home, it was about 10:30, around the time the kids had to go to bed, usually. Both Dash and Violet were quick to change into their pajamas, and started to argue over who should get the bathroom first.

“I got hurt so I should go first.”

“No, you always get in there before I do, so this may be my one chance to use it first. I’m the one mom always puts in charge, and since you’ve been told not to use your powers, I say that you should rest while I use the bathroom first.” Dash was never happy when Violet exercised her authority over him.

Helen was slow to change. She was starting to feel a little better, seeing as Dash seemed to get over his injuries fairly quickly, but she still wasn’t fully able to accept all that happened. By the time she was done, Bob had walked into the room after putting Jack-Jack down for the night. Both at the hospital and the ride home, he could tell that this was getting to her, and badly. He walked over and put his hands on her shoulders.

“I know you’re worried about him. Believe me, I was just as nervous and upset about what happened to him as you were, but he is in high spirits right now. It’s best to treat him like he was before.”

“I know there wasn’t much I could’ve done for him in that situation, but I can’t help but feel like I let him down as his mother.”

Bob wrapped her in a full embrace, but had a worried expression on his face. “You can’t protect him from everything bad. That how it is for all kids. Trust me, I wish I could follow Violet around all day to make sure nothing bad happened to her, but I know that’s not what she would want. They’re going to take risks. That’s just inevitable” he said softly, but also a tiny bit depressingly.

“He’s too young, though, to have to go through all of that. Kids shouldn’t have to worry about going to the hospital.” Her feelings of guilt were starting to be replaced by feelings of reality. “But that won’t stop him. He’s rebellious. He’ll want to fight regardless of what we say. I wish I had the power to protect him from getting hurt like that.” She felt Bob’s embrace tighten slightly, and she felt her eyes water slightly, too.

After a half-hour, Helen hadn’t fallen asleep yet. Bob was sound asleep, but all she could think about was Dash. She wanted to check on him, so she got out of bed and went to open his door, only to see glowing coming from underneath the door. She decided to knock. “Honey” she said after three knocks, not waiting for an answer before opening the door.

She saw Dash almost half-heartedly watching TV, not so much enjoying it as much as he was just passing time. “Your not asleep yet?” she asked.

“I couldn’t. I’ve been thinking about what I did wrong out there.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong out there, honey.” She said, walking over and sitting on the side of his bed. “Everything that happened was because of the robbers, not you.”

“But I put myself in that position. The guy had a perfect shot on me. I got hurt and it’s because I didn’t think about what I was doing.” Dash sounded like he was on the verge of crying now. He had a lot of emotions built up that he didn’t want his dad or Violet seeing. For as much as Helen was blaming herself for not doing anything to protect Dash, Dash felt like he dropped the entire world off of his shoulders.

Helen took him in an embrace, trying to calm him down. “Sweetie, no matter what you did out there, you are not the one to blame. What you were doing out there was nothing short of amazing. You helped give us even more determination to take down those robbers. I was the most terrified person on this planet when I saw you go down the way you did, but before all of that, I was also the most proud. You were spectacular out there, today.”

She let him get his emotions out for as long as he needed. She kicked herself all night because he got hurt. The best she could do now was to simply let him hurt, and be there for him.

After a minute or so, he was able to calm down, feeling better that he was able to get that off of his chest. Still finding comfort in his mom’s embrace, he quietly said “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“It’s alright, Dash. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you.”

She let go of him and told him “Next time, we’ll fight them together. You won’t have to handle such important tasks on your own. You don’t seem like your ready for that.”

“Thanks mom.” A light smile crept onto his face.

“You’re welcome, honey. I love you.” She gave him a kiss on the forehead before getting up and going for the door. “Sweet dreams.”

“Good night, mom. I love you, too.”

Both fell asleep with a smile that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that does it for my first fic. Thank you to all the people who read this. I hope you all enjoyed.

**Author's Note:**

> Considering this is my first work, constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. I hope you enjoyed the first part of this fic.


End file.
